Music. It surrounds my life, enchants me, echoes, rattles my bones, races my heart, resonant with melodies and poetry, bathes my body in dopamine, skins me alive, raw, exposed; transports, time travels. When I hear Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon suddenly I'm five or six years old, washed in the perfume of briny Pacific ocean, redwood, marijuana. I see a wooden cable-spool table with carved initials, and my long-haired surfer cousin and his surfer-dude friends wearing their puka shell necklaces. From the first mournful beat, the above Depeche Mode song flattens me. I am in high school, I smell Aussie Scrunch Spray, first love, first heartbreak. Fiona Apple's Criminal, and I'm pregnant with my daughter, swollen feet propped up, writing my first novel.

(Copacabana remix, you ask? I'm dancing on top of the bar! Yep. That's right.)(Lola by the Kinks? So many memories to that song...BUT, I assure you, I was born a female and am still a female...and, yeah, I do like the Kinks. Do people sing that song to me CONSTANTLY? Yes. I don't mind. It's a great song.)

I hear this song by Zero 7 and I am in Husband's arms, happy. I smell his skin, taste the salt. So much love.

Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes make me tremble like Lloyd. Every single time. Those lyrics. Damn.

Reading a book is a very similar experience for me. Magical. I have so many favorite books that are falling apart like overcooked meat off the bone, threadbare, my DNA embedded into their fibers.I STILL cry EVERY time I read my beloved, battered copy of The Giving Tree. Watership Down moves me, even after all these years. Charlotte's Web continues to capture me, I smell the hay and manure as fresh today as when I was a child.

I've read The English Patient and Rebecca and Atlas Shrugged so many times, I know which pages are loose, and which scenes have my pizza sauce thumbprints on them.

I can recite almost every passage of James Joyce's Ulysses. That last piece slays me (any errors are mine, I'm writing it from memory):

...when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes yes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

YES!!! *Goosebumps*

When I'm lost in my own novel writing, I'm spellbound by the characters in my head. They take me on their journey, they make me weep and laugh. Sometimes they really piss me off.As I've mentioned in previous posts, I often have music on while I write.I find it especially helpful when writing a very moody scene.

This morning I had to write a painful going-their-separate-ways scene and this song really took me where I needed to be:Snuff by Slipknot (I know, I know, but try it. It's powerful, heart wrenching, beautiful.)

Music. Books. The soundtracks and stories of our lives. Multicolored and complex.

I could no more name my favorite song or band than I could choose one favorite book. I'm a literary and musical omnivore, multifarious...Sophie I am not.

What do YOU listen to? Read? Write?

(*I don't know what's up with Blogger today...but I cannot get this to format the text once I hit publish. The font size is all normal in my draft, but as soon as I hit publish, it tweaks. Sorry.)

AHhhh I just adore Pink Floyd. I'm quite fanatic about them. My favourite album of Floyds is "The Wall", though. As far as "dark side..." goes I love the song "eclipse". And I must say that I'm quite taken aback here - I thought I know ALL cool songs by Slipknot, but for some reason I missed this one. So THANK you for posting this and - brace yourself because I'm going to sound very fan-girlish here - I officially love you now :) Because of Pink Floyd. AND Slipknot.

This post made my day, really.

(as for what I read: recenlty I read a novel of a Polish writer Mirosław Nahacz - he's really brilliant, but I don't think he's been translated to English)

I will always remember "The Blower's Daughter" negatively; it was Evan and my's first year together, and I'd found out he'd been cheating on me (loosely); we reconciled, then three days later watched Closer. Not a good movie to watch when you've recently been hurt by cheating. And then "The Blower's Daughter" in the end...god. I cried and cried for about an hour, and he felt like a real shit.

Conversely, The Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be" makes me think of him positively--pretty much sums up the way we feel about each other. It's his ringtone for my number. :)

I could definitely go on and on. I always listen to music, and of course I read like you.

Snuff by Slipknot -- their softer side! Love that song, though, in a huge way. I second your motion that Snuff takes me to a love-anger place not many songs can tread, and I would've listed it if you hadn't.

Highway 20 Ride by Zac Brown Band moves me. I'm divorced. I have my own I-20 drive here in Dallas.

Aww what a lovely selection of songs and more potent because of what they meant to you personally!

I'm very partial to Kinks' Lola. I love the pathos and the oh so English-ness of it all. It's self-deprecating and oh so slightly cynical and ironic but ultimately accepting and never blinkered. Lovely!!! :-)

All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow and Self Esteem by Offspring both take me back to a summer I spent at a training class in Dallas with a group of people about my age from many different countries. We made such great friendships and had an amazing time. Music is so powerful!

Oh wow, that Depeche song brings back so many conflicting memories for me- that one and Enjoy the Silence as well...Somebody...and Blasphemous Rumors (to which I wrote extensive passages of my second novel manuscript last year, actually)

This post, Lola, is exactly the reason that I am still reading blogs even with my limited eyesight.

Thank you so much, Lola. I constantly fight the urge to write about music on my blog for fear that the folks want to talk about books only. Not really. Yet, I could talk about music all day! So this post was right up my alley!I love the Pink Floyd discussion. I'm a hair metal guy from the 80's but when cd came out and I bought my first player, Dark Side of the Moon was my first cd. Cheers! to Nicole who mentioned the greatest song of all-time: Stairway to Heaven. I'll have to listen to that Slipknot song that all of you have been talking about.Have a great week!-James

I was SUCH a Mode fan. Okay, still am. Different songs take me back to different times. "World In My Eyes" and "Sweetest Perfection" I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone (he was away for the summer). I sat outside the apartment door because that's all the further I could get the cord to stretch. I love their lyrics and Martin Gore's voice guts me every time.

My first memory of Pink Floyd came when I was ten years old. Some crazy looking dude came up on me and my friends in a parking lot where we were riding our bikes and jumped at us and landed in some sort of karate stance while holding up a pink lighter. He waved it back and forth expecting us to cheer or start reciting "comfortably numb". Instead we just sort of looked at him dumbfounded and he said "man I can't believe they don't know who pink floyd is!"

I told my uncle about the incident maybe a week later and he told me about the band and how awesome they are (and they are, huge fan now). Funny, my uncle's basement smelled just like the crazy guy in the parking lot.

Gosh...I could go on for hours and hours about music and the way it weaves through the threads of my life. It is with me always. At work, at home, in the car, on the plane, or just jogging down the street. I revel in everything from the classics to stumbling across undiscovered artists.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band has been my favorite since I was an 18 year old high school graduate about to embark on his college career. He taught me there was more to music than three power chords and pop lyrics. "Born to Run" is my favorite song, because it found me at a time when I was afraid to walk out into the world by myself. I have been running...and listening...ever since.

Music does the same 'take me back' thing--especially songs that had a limited time they were popular, as those have less 'noise' to wack the memories out of line. I can't write to it though. I think I don't have enough excess brain power. Once upon a time I wrote to music, but the ability has left me completely. I usually write to the white noise of a bathroom fan.

I can't imagine life without music or books. Lately, when I write, I use music with no lyrics to drown out the sounds around me. And if I need to get in the mood to write a scene, I listen to the music before I start writing. My Pandora stations tell all - Glenn Miller, Erik Satie, Sara MacLachlan.

I'm glad you have just as much of an appreciation for music as I do. I couldn't live without it. Music absolutely inspires me (I'm even convinced that music itself is my muse, which I will post about soon) and stirs up so much emotion.

I'm mostly a fan of little known indie bands, but I definitely love some good old rock.

...my feet are balanced on the coffee table, a cold beer in my lap, its buddies, drained and useless, stand guard over my elevated ankles. I've spent the past year pissing away my golden ticket at The U, majoring in Budweiser, and thinking to myself, "I don't need this. I'm good enough to do it on my own. Everyone's told me so."I close my eyes, which are seeing the world in two's anyway, and listen to Fiona Apple's "Criminal" from the stereo in the dorm next door.I won't soon forget that moment, that decision, and that song.I do love Fiona's throaty drawl...but not the choice I made. Live n learn. Live n learn:)

I follow you on the Dark Side of the Moon, and Depeche Mode is definately a reminder of high-school days. Now I'm mostly a headbanger, and enjoyed the Slipknot song, though it's not my favorite band. Most of the time I listen to black metal and death metal. Ulysses has been on my reading list for many years. I loved The Dubliners, cool stories and easier to get through >:)

What a fantastic post. Music moves me the same way. I definitely listen to it when I write. I have a playlist for the novel I'm working on and I love it. Every time I hear Avril Lavigne I flash back to my last novel in vivid detail. I love that!

May your pen be mighty

About Me

Lola Sharp

My name is Lola. (I'm not a showgirl) Yes, L-O-L-A Lola. It's the least of my worries. Let's move on, shall we?
This blog is mostly about my misadventures on the journey to publication and beyond. My passion for lush prose, quirky characters, art, music, literature, performing arts and anything creative will be a major theme here. This journey of mine will not always be pretty. Much like rubbernecking a train wreck, I know sometimes you just can't help but look at the carnage that is often my life. So strap on your neck brace, helmet and 5-point harness and come along for the ride!
Licentia poetica.